Feds useful in Rodney King case, and in Texas

Updated 11:45 pm, Saturday, June 23, 2012

It happened 21 years ago, half a continent away, and the lesson it imparted is still hard at work in Texas today.

The death last week of Rodney King, a historical figure because of a 1991 beating by Los Angeles police and the events that ensued, was a reminder of the racial divides that plagued us.

But the lesson for Texas — home to Jasper and that not-so-long-ago lynching by dragging and where racial tensions still abound — is not just about the introspection King's death reminds us to undertake. It is about institutional remedies, often of last resort.

Let's recap. After a change of venue, an all-white jury acquitted four of the police officers involved in King's beating, despite graphic video of the drunken driving suspect's savage beating after he led officers on a chase.

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The resistance King offered did not warrant the overreaction. That all-white jury, however, refused to believe its eyes.

The acquittals sparked riots that claimed more than 50 lives and stopped only with the intervention of the National Guard and Marines.

Local judgment and justice failed. A measure of justice came from a different source — the federal government.

A federal grand jury stepped in with charges of civil rights violations — resulting in convictions for two officers and the acquittal of two others.

The Justice Department in particular gets a bad rap these days — what with high-profile botched prosecutions of late. And, still, we in Texas should thank that lucky star on the state flag for a federal government with the ability to step in.

A few examples:

Texas, not a paragon of environmental virtue in any case, would be even less so were it not for the Environmental Protection Agency. But Texas has made it almost a full-time occupation suing the feds to push its anti-regulation, pro-business mindset.

It's the federal Voting Rights Act that compels Texas to seek preclearance for any changes to election law. This has forced the state into federal court to get that approval. This has come into play most recently in the state's redistricting and its voter ID law.

While a District of Columbia federal court and a local federal court failed to get the best possible maps for current elections to take into proper account minority, particularly Latino, population growth, the redistricting was still improved. Thank federal lawsuits and the pressures of the Voting Rights Act through the courts.

And voter ID, which would disproportionately target Texas voters of color, is on hold only because of Justice Department objections.

After the state Legislature, through its abortion “affiliate” dodge, banned Planned Parenthood from a key women's health program, the feds said no. The state insisted, so one federal court issued an injunction on the ban, which was upheld by another. And the matter of whether that injunction becomes permanent is in, yes, federal court.

Those are just examples from my short time here. I'm quite certain there are more.

King's death reminds us not just of how we must still work to close the gaps that divide us. It's a reminder that the allegedly big, bad, evil, rights-stomping, never-gets-it-right federal government serves a useful role — most useful of all when state and local justice and policy are so transparently bad.